The present invention relates to a woven belt prepared by weaving a plurality of filament yarn bundles substantially orthogonal to each other into a strip, and in particular, to a woven belt having a high load-bearing strength and a seatbelt device incorporating the woven belt as a webbing.
Woven belts prepared by weaving high-strength filament yarns have been widely used as strips for restraining heavy articles and for bundling together a plurality of materials and the like. One well-known example of an application for such woven belts is a webbing for a seatbelt device for restraining the bodies of occupants onto seats such as those of vehicles.
Webbings of seatbelt devices are required to fulfill various quality requirements regarding comfort during fastening and ease of withdrawing the webbing from a reactor, i.e., a device for retracting the webbing, in addition to the basic requirement of a sufficient load-bearing capacity for restraining the body of an occupant in the event of a vehicle collision. Accordingly, various techniques for improving the filament yarns for use in woven belts and weaving structures of the belts have been proposed (for example, refer to Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2004-315984).
A woven belt by its nature is not for temporary use but for repetitive use. For example, in the aforementioned example of the seatbelt device, an occupant fastens the belt as the occupant enters a vehicle and unfastens it as the occupant exits the vehicle. When the belt is used for material handling or for hey articles, the belt is unfastened after it is used to restrain or bundle articles and fastened again next time the belt is used.
Because woven belts are expected to be repeatedly fastened and unfastened and put under large tension during use, they preferably have as high a wear resistance as possible.